Egypt Again 2023 - What to do in Cairo When You Have 2 Days Spare - And A BIt About Mobile Phones and Internet

 I had allowed myself 4 days in Cairo to visit the new Grand Egyptian Museum, that isn't open yet. I was looking at 2 days, possibly 3, in the GEM which is only a short walk from my hotel, and then a day deciding what to do next. A visit to Alexandria is still on the cards to explore an old family connection there, but the weather in Alex in February is not good...

In any case I have two days to fill which is easy enough because I have not been to Saqqara since 2017, and since my last visit things have changed.

And I have also been told I should visit the New Museum of Egyptian Civilisation.

Saqqara is a little bit of a journey out from Giza, the time varies with how fast the taxi driver can go... But about 45 minutes is average...

The boss in my hotel is only too happy to sell me a car and guide for the morning, except I don't want the guide, which is going be either him or his father. (The father has lived in the The States I believe so his English is very good, the son's not so good).

He looks a bit disappointed but to be honest I find that guides get in the way, and want to rush you from one place to another too quickly, which is what happened on my last visit. As it turned out my driver was quite a good guide anyway and in exchange I bought him lunch.

The trip cost 60 USD, (I could have used LE but he preferred USD), which included my lunch and the basic entry ticket to Saqqara, I opted to buy the 'extras' ticket which cost a further 180 LE on top of the 200LE I had already paid via the driver. If you have the time an the inclination I would recommend going the whole hog and buying the 440 LE ticket which cover just about everything as it works out cheaper.

Arriving outside the actual site there were the usual souvenir sellers, but of course you are not obliged to buy anything! And anyway they charge far too much, but you are allowed to haggle to your heart's content, but i wouldn't bother because they don't have a very good range of stuff, better to reserve a day and go to proper shops. One of them spoke with a strong West Midlands accent,mainly because he had lived in Wolverhampton for a lot of his life.

Inside Saqqara I was not disappointed as I could now see the Step Pyramid properly, last time I was here it was covered in scaffolding,and also there were fewer visitors so it was quite uncrowded, and I managed to tag on to a group that had an English speaking guide... Always a plus! Somewhere along the line I completely lost my sense of direction during the short video clip, that's not Cairo in the distance at all! Some of the nobles tombs are included in the extras ticket others are not even included in the full ticket. 

The Museum of Imhotep is not open as they are giving it a makeover, but all around Saqqara there is more digging going on...

I didn't get a chance to see this on my last visit because the guide was in a hurry...

Just a few pictures but not enough to spoil your visit!

And now we come to a bit about the dreaded mobile phone syndrome.

I don't know how we coped before we had them, 50 years ago if you went on holiday you contacted your family and friends by sending them a picture postcard, depending on where you had gone, and for how long, it was quite usual for you to get back home before the cards did.

These days we seem to have to be in almost constant communication with the rest of the world all of the time, why this should be i really don't know, but I suppose I am as bad as everyone else!

Apart from the normal landlines which is how the internet is still done in most countries, not even fibre optic in many places, Egypt has a fully developed mobile phone system with generally excellent coverage, unless you are in the desert of course because the camels don't use the internet..... The technology of the system is such that you can bring your own mobile with you and it will work.... Generally the coverage is on the 4G network, during my recent trip, over 8 weeks, there was only one occasion when the signal was less than 4G, and that was in a taxi in an underpass in Cairo...

There are 4 main operators, Vodafone, EtiSalat, Orange, and We (Telecom Egypt), to date on various visits I have used 3 of them and found the service overall to be very good, reliable, and economic. You can look them up on the internet to see what deals they are doing for visitors and then buy a SIM card at the airport.

I don't do this because there are always queues at the airport desks, and also I have found that if you find a mobile shop near to where you are staying you will often get a better deal than the standard tourist ones!

This time around I used We where the shop in Giza gave me 4 SIM cards, ideal if you a family or group, for 156LE which included 22.5 Gb of data and 1000 minutes of local calls, (useful because I have friends there I like to chat to), but only 30 SMS, certainly enough for me. Unless you are going to be streaming movies 22.5 Gb is a lot. Each SIM had its own account and could be recharged separately. the basic credit lasted a month but could be topped up which some tourist cards cannot.

Contrary to what you might hear, you can get access to Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp. I don't know why some people have the idea they are banned in Egypt, but what I can tell you is that some of the packages sold by the companies might not include some features, for instance I have friends there who can use WhatsApp for pictures movies and general messaging, even audio messages, but they cannot make an audio or video call. for that they use Messenger or Skype.

What is difficult is if for some strange reason you try to use a VPN because these are not allowed and they are blocked although there are a couple that the government haven't found out about yet so I was able to use those if I needed to appear as though I was in my home country.

So in a small nutshell there is a bit about mobiles and the internet!

Many hotels have a data cap, as do a lot of people in their homes, so although you might apparently have an internet connection nothing seems to happen. What happens here usually is that the staff manage to consume all the data watching videos on YouTube and there is nothing left for the guests!! A bit unfair but life rarely is fair.  

A little note about mobiles if you are over 60 and can stay longer than 30 days...

Theoretically your SIM card should be cut off as you cannot get one without a valid visa, and if you are over 60 and staying for a longer period then your visa has expired so you cannot still have an active SIM card.

In practice I have found this doesn't happen because it seems it has to be cut off manually!